1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to vehicles and, in particular, to a health monitoring system for a vehicle. Still more particularly, the present disclosure provides a method and apparatus for maintaining a desired level of performance in a vehicle using a health monitoring system.
2. Background
A transportation environment may be land, sea, air, outer space, of a combination of these. In each of these types of transportation environments, undesired operating conditions may be present for the vehicle. These undesired operating conditions may result from various sources. These sources may include, for example, vehicle systems not operating as expected or crew members not performing operations as expected. Vehicle system may not operate as expected if oil pressures are not as high as desired on a land-based vehicle. Another example of a system not operating as expected is if a structure on an aircraft does not carry a desired load.
In avoiding undesired operating conditions for vehicles, monitoring systems may be used in vehicles. These monitoring systems monitor systems and structures in the vehicle. These monitoring systems may assess the “health” of the systems and structures in the vehicle. Further, these monitoring systems may provide alerts to an operator of the vehicle when a condition occurs in which the health of a system or structure does not allow it to operate as expected or may not operate as expected in the near future. These types of monitoring systems are also referred to as health monitoring systems.
With respect to vehicle operators such as pilots, regulations are present to set the hours that pilots may operate aircraft and how much rest is needed in between flights. Additionally, regulations are also present to identify physical conditions needed to operate an aircraft. Records may be checked to ensure that pilots operate aircraft within the regulations. Further, tests also may be performed to check pilots to determine whether they meet regulations regarding physical conditions.
With monitoring systems for vehicles and regulations for operators of vehicles in place, the occurrence of undesired operating conditions for a vehicle may be reduced or avoided. However, with operators of vehicles, the ability of an operator to control or manage a vehicle may change during operation of the vehicle. These types of changes may lead to undesired operating conditions for the vehicle.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a method and apparatus which takes into account one or more of the issues discussed above, as well as possibly other issues.